Holmes Middle Date Shutout

[Electric Peak]

I got a few hits, but no runs.

 

As I write, the Goldberg's sale of the Dan Holmes middle date large cents is winding down. I had in mind to obtain a nice 1828 cent and/or a nice 1829 for my registry set, and perhaps some decent circulated pieces for my old Whitman album. No luck...

 

During the past week, I decided to call the auctioneers to ask to be a phone bidder. Even though I had no trouble on-line last fall during the Naftzger late dates sale, I recalled that some folks did have difficulty earlier during the Naftzger middle dates sale.

 

I was at my father-in-law's house during the auction. The Goldberg's server would not let me connect to the live auction. My father-in-law has Verizon DSL, I think, and I suspect that the connection was being blocked. So I was glad to be a phone bidder for the "big" lots, but would have liked to be able to bid live on the "inexpensive" stuff as well.

 

Now lately I have been unable to connect to my workplace network via VPN from his house. (This is sometimes necessary, as I am on-call 24/365 in case of Hubble Space Telescope problems.) But after a couple hundred lots were sold, I decided to try VPN anyway. It connected! So I restarted Firefox, logged in to the Goldberg's site, and got into the live bidding. So the phone bidding wouldn't be necessary, but I was still going to bid that way.

 

The phone call came to my cell phone about 10 lots before my first one. All I could hear was garbled sounds. They tried again two more times with the same result before resorting to the backup number, that of my father-in-law's home phone. Much better...

 

I had entered the high absentee bid a couple weeks ago. As live bids passed that level, I bid a few times, at which point the price seemed too much for the coin, and I wound up being the underbidder. I asked the man on the phone to hang on for a few more lots. One of the ex-Naftzger coins was coming up. Although graded higher than the earlier lot, I didn't like it as much. But at this point I was prepared to bid on it. I got blown away as the bids went well past last year's result.

 

The second phone call came about 20 minutes later as my selected 1829 cent came up. It last sold just over 5 years ago in Heritage's sale of the Rasmussen collection. Again, I wound up being the underbidder to a sale price that nearly doubled the Rasmussen/Heritage result.

 

After those defeats, I logged off, ate dinner, and went for a nice walk with my wife. Other coins are now coming into focus...

 

Have a great holiday all. And remember the object of this holiday: honoring American military personnel who made "the ultimate sacrifice".